Postgres: Managing Access to Roles

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to configure Grant Kits to automate access requests to a Postgres Role. This use case models Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) using core Postgres components.

We will be using the Postgres Starter Kit as a base and replace configuration stubs for our use case.

Before you start

1. Make sure you have:

   • An Abbey account

   • An Abbey API Token

2. Make sure you setup:

   1. A Postgres Starter Kit by following Get a Starter Kit

   2. A Connection to a repo by following Connect a Repo

Step 1: Configure Your Grant Kit

Configure Output

Grant Kits rely on your GitHub account and repository name to output access changes, which we'll set through Terraform local variables. Update the locals block in main.tf with your account_name and repo_name

main.tf

 locals {
  account_name = "" #CHANGEME
  repo_name = "" #CHANGEME
  ...
}

Configure Reviewers

Workflow defines who should approve an access request.

Let's update the reviewers block by adding yourself as the reviewer by switching [e-mail] with the email address you use to sign into Abbey.

main.tf

 resource "abbey_grant_kit" "..." {
   ...
   workflow = {
     steps = [
       {
         reviewers = {
-          one_of = ["[e-mail]"] # CHANGEME
+          one_of = ["[e-mail]"]

Step 2: Link Postgres with Abbey

Now you'll need to link Postgres with Abbey.

curl -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ABBEY_API_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  https://api.abbey.io/v1/users/<user_id>/apps \
  -d '{"type": "postgres", "data": {"role": "<your Postgres role>"}}'

Step 3: Deploy Your Starter Kit

First, add your GitHub-related secrets to your repo:

• PG_PASSWORD

What should it look like?

You can optionally set the following variables as secrets or just provide a default.

variables.tf

variable "pg_host" {
  type = string
  default = "postgres_server_ip" # CHANGEME
  sensitive = true
}
variable "pg_port" {
  type = number
  default = 5432
  sensitive = true
}
variable "pg_db" {
  type = string
  default = "postgres" # CHANGEME
  sensitive = true
}
variable "pg_username" {
  type = string
  default = "postgres_user" # CHANGEME
  sensitive = true
}
variable "pg_password" {
  type = string
  default = "postgres_password" # CHANGEME
  sensitive = true
}

variable "pg_connect_timeout" {
  type = number
  default = 15
}

To deploy your Starter Kit, follow instructions from Deploy Your Grant Kit.

Step 4: Automate Access Management

🎉 Congratulations! Abbey is now managing permissions to your Resource for you. 🎉

You can now start requesting and approving access by following the Request Access and Approve or Deny Access Requests guides.

Abbey strives to help you automate and secure access management without being intrusive.

To that end, this Pull Request contains native Terraform HCL code using normal open source Terraform Provider libraries. It represents the permissions change. In this case, it's just a simple creation of a new Terraform Resource.

Next Steps

To learn more about what Privacy Policy you can configure, try one of our Step-by-Step Tutorials.

For more information on how Abbey works, visit the Key Concepts or Grant Kits page.